


all the lost souls

by flufflybunny (electrumqueen)



Series: Heliocentrism [1]
Category: Inheritance Cycle - Paolini
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/flufflybunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>galbatorix and eragon; when you play with shadows, you're bound to drown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the lost souls

_you dream, all right. it's not some fairy-story, you're not some fairytale villain. (not a fairytale hero, either, but what can you do.) you have dreams. you have nightmares, even. (too many of those.)_

\--  
_  
you have lots of nightmares. more than dreams, most nights. mostly they are composed of tears and regrets; fear does not upset you, cannot hurt you, not since all your fear was ripped out of you along with your heart. sometimes you feel like a walking nightmare. like there is death following you, like you have woven your own shroud._

\--

galbatorix is a madman; he is a king. he hears the whispering; he's not stupid and he's aware of what people think of him. he also doesn't actually care.

there are spaces in him, places where soul was rent from flesh and left as testament an empty gaping wound, invisible to all but those who care to look. the largest of his empty places, were one to look, would say _morzan_ and the secret unthought name of his dragon. he can see the emptiness all around him, in the eyes of all the people he meets, and it is all the magic he needs.

morzan was the sun, the brightest light galbatorix had ever seen; he had been the catalyst, the force that pulled galbatorix out of the despair that followed the death of his dragon; he had been the one to show the dragonless man that he could live again. galbatorix had loved him, more than he'd thought was possible, more than he'd ever loved anyone (more than he thought anyone could love), save perhaps his dragon.

it had almost killed him to let the rendevous information slip; he'd very nearly reconsidered when the lovers'-bond screamed pain, loss, betrayal even, but morzan-- morzan was the story of ilirea, written in emerald-green eyes. he was recovery, a weakness galbatorix could no longer afford; he was the past, howevermuch galbatorix had loved him, and there was no place for him in this brave new world.

his son, on the other hand--selena had been intensely magical, moreso than anyone had been able to tell, it was so latent (galbatorix had known, but no one had needed to know)-- murtagh, solemn quiet-eyed murtagh, with his mother's smile and his father's hands; he will be stronger than his father, someday. someday soon, even. he is his mother's son, even so; he is still broken from his father (and maybe that was not galbatorix's brightest idea, the wine) and so he does not believe. that will (that must) change, even if galbatorix has to change it himself.

he watches the war from his iron obsidian cathedral, his dragon's mind soft and sharp against his own, and he wishes he could fly.

\--

eragon is not particularly sane, he knows. he also kind of doesn't care. it's not like his sanity matters, anymore than his ability to function in society-- as long as he wins this war, overthrows this tyrant, no one will care.

if his hands do not shake when he kills, now, if his heart does not hurt with every death on his hands, well, that is what a hero does, is it not? it is what he knows (all he knows) and all he has left of the person he used to be; if the man is to be subsumed by the hero, by the myth, then that is what it takes.

arya's hands are cold on his wrists, cold on the back of his neck, fingers long and smooth and elegant as she kisses him, passion-filled and heatless and he laughs, sometimes in the dark, at all the things he used to care about, all the things he used to want so desperately it felt like he couldn't breathe; now he can, but he doesn't have to. he's no longer the desperate one; he holds all the cards, weighs the dice, knows the words she's going to say before she says them, knows the things he has to do to make her fold under his hands. (it feels like winning; he runs his fingers through her hair, feels the weight of her pulse in his veins, feels like he's flying.)

saphira stays untangled from his mind; some days he feels empty, like part of him's missing; most days he doesn't notice. she takes him where he needs to go; fights with him when she can; anything that used to be there, that is no longer, is not something he has the heart to miss. there is a part of him that remembers his beautiful blue dragon, her bright eyes and her kind voice; he quashes it down in favour of the grey-steel-white dragon he knows now, all fire and anger and sharp edges, pared to the ivory-whiteness of bone, the darkness that they fight almost the same as they themselves.

he sees murtagh, from time to time; his brother's hands shake all the time, his eyes don't focus, and he twitches at the slightest sound; the one time eragon peered into his head there was such a sucking hole of loneliness, of loss, that he recoiled. it takes a lot to make him flinch; it takes a lot to make him feel sad, guilty; he didn't mean to kill murtagh's red dragon, but there was no help for it, in the end.

sometimes he misses nasuada, misses her calmness and her strength, misses all the plans she had and the trust she held close to her heart; but it was really her fault, because she kept everything so close to her; she didn't trust him enough, and liabilities are the last thing this war needs. someone has to be the hero, goddess, and not many people are lining up for it, not any, if you count there's a total of absolute zero and sometimes he misses home, fuck, but that's the last thing he can care about, with all this blood on his hands.

he flies into town on his ivory-white dragon, the sound of cheers loud in his mind, and he lets the magic burn in his hands, and he remembers when he wanted to be a hero.

\--

"so," galbatorix says. he is blue-eyed, blond; his half-smile is predatory, vicious. "shadeslayer."

"so," eragon tells him. the sword in his hand is light like a ghost, bloodred against his palm. "mad king."

"you're the one with a sword called misery," galbatorix tells him lightly. "you're the one with the sword that i made for the man i loved."

around them is blood and death and guts and mud; crimson sprays across eragon's cheek as he cuts neatly, sidesteps away from a man all in black. he wipes the back of his hand across his cheek and makes a face. "always with the dirt," he says, "always with the red. i'm almost out of mail; it rusts so easily, you know?"

"i know," galbatorix says. he laughs, light and hollow. "welcome to the end of the world."

"your world, maybe," eragon says. the sun is shining, reflecting bright against his mail.

galbatorix's magic wraps silky-dark around him, sucking up all the light. "same difference."

saphira says, _kill him_; shruikan's tail twines tight around hers, black and blue-white; her claws rake a thin gold line down his chest and he screams. in the sky, arya's dragon is wheeling emerald-bright, fire piercing the ground.

eragon says, "i don't think you loved him."

galbatorix says, "i don't think you know what love is."

"well," eragon says, "that makes two of us." he closes his eyes, and reaches for the darkness.

\--

murtagh walks in the dark, like morzan did before him; they are not eragon, not galbatorix; they have less to fall, less to lose, and far less to break. he kneels in the wreck that held his brother and his father's lover and all those who stood with them; his father's ghost brushes his shoulder, smiling.

his hands press against the white and black marble ground. they leave a faint smear of the red of his blood, of his dragon, and then he gets up, starts walking. it's been a long time since he was free.


End file.
